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Knowledge sharing is a discretionary act of employees who might see benefits in keeping their knowledge to themselves. We focus on the other-oriented nature of knowledge sharing to outline how respectful leadership as an other-oriented leadership style can enhance followers’ knowledge sharing through its effect on followers’ other-orientedness. Specifically, we propose that respectful leaders increase followers’ social mindfulness—defined as the cognitive (i.e. perspective taking) and affective (i.e. empathic concern) willingness to behave in a way that increases others’ opportunities—which facilitates knowledge sharing. To test our conceptual model, we conducted a three-wave field study with 275 followers, and a multi-source field study with 83 leader-follower dyads. In line with our hypotheses, followers’ perspective taking (Study 1 and 2) and empathic concern (Study 1) mediated the positive effect of …